Emanuel Tov on the Differences between the MT, LXX, and DSS (4QDeutq) readings of Deuteronomy 32:43

  

It seems that the long text was shortened in MT during one of the compositional stages of the song. At that time part of the verse was removed in an act of theological censorship. The added elements in 4QDeut^q and the LXX were deleted in MT when the phrase “sons of God” was considered an undesirable polytheistic depiction of the world of the divine. Tendentious changes are never consistent, and hence similar polytheistic depictions remained elsewhere without harming the Israelite religion . . . Thus, the scribe responsible for this act of censorship was not active in the other passages. (Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible [4^th ed.; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2022], 249)